Lets face it. Collectively, we’re pu$$ies. Life is risky. Life has always been risky. And right now, life is the least risky its ever been.
I seriously wonder sometimes what the people who conquered the west, moving to unknown places with nothing more than a wagon, their meager possession, and a hope for a better future, would think if they could see us. Probably disgust and amazement at how we’re afraid of our own shadows.
That’s just it. Those pioneers had hope. Hope that if they got to their destination, if disease didn’t take them, if the natives didn’t kill them, life would be better. They didn’t have to worry about their own government putting them in jail if they dug a well, or drained a swamp, or defended their land, or didn’t give half their earnings to the taxman.
What do you do when hope is gone?
Public Schools are to blame: Bell tells you when to sit. Bell tells you when to stand. Bell tells you when to shiite. Bell, bell, bell. All this in a highly controlled, highly protected and predictable environment. Text books organize every lesson into predictable little bites. End of section quizzes are predicatively included in end of chapter tests. End of chapter test questions are included in finals.
Every thing is neat, easy, wrapped in a bow. Stress is whether or not you are late for the bus. We are a nation of people who expect everything to be safe, easy and predictable. When that doesn’t happen... MELTDOWN
Yep, you nailed it. Everyone is crying over hangnails apparently unaware of how lucky and rich (yes, rich) they are compared to their ancestors.
It’s ridiculous how upset and worried people are about really trivial and superficial bullcarp, yet have no clue and no skills in the event things really go sideways.
Sad, but true. My adopted dad, who passed away a couple of years ago, was born in a sod house on the eastern plains of rural Colorado in 1916. His mother died a couple of years later when the flu epidemic killed so many and he was bounced from one family to the next, just another toe headed, motherless boy.
There is an old picture of him from during the "Great" depression, standing with his friends who are all wearing store bought clothes, while he is wearing the pants he stitched together himself.
The intense shame he felt during that time made it hard for him to even look at that picture for the rest of his life, but that shame drove him to somehow overcome himself and his circumstances and make a success of himself anyway, despite not having more than a high school education and despite failing repeatedly.
When I first met him, I thought he was the most hardassed individual I'd ever met and still do. That's what it took for him to survive what life threw at him and throw it right back. My early years weren't all that easy and I think I've overcome my share of hurdles, but the older I get, the more I realize how much less of a man I am by comparison.
His generation fought the Axis and saved the world. Our generation gave all that away in exchange for some political correctness and "free" stuff from GuvCo.
You're right. Collectively, we are a bunch of pu$$ies who had it too easy and are about to lose it all.
Yep. We are ENCOURAGED to wallow in our disappointment and pain instead of fighting to change it.
It's about more than that. Honestly, I think we are to some extent feeling the same things that led people to become alcoholics and give up hope in the USSR.
There's been a loss of purpose, and a loss of the hope that comes from thinking you have the power to change your own situation. When the media doesn't tell the truth, when those in power treat those who have achieved as the problem rather than the solution, when people who have delayed gratification for years to have a better life find themselves not much or no better off than those who made no such effort, there is a grand disillusionment. We are living in a time of great demoralization. Ironically, or maybe not so ironically, demoralization was one of the most powerful tools of the politburo.